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Posted on 08/14/2025 6:18:57 PM PDT by decal
An estimated 240 South Texas landowners and other interested parties packed the Uvalde County Event Center on August 5 to hear details of a project to build what’s planned to be Texas’ highest voltage transmission line to date.
The “Howard-Solstice Project,” a 760 kilovolt line between Fort Stockton and San Antonio, is sponsored jointly by CPS Energy of San Antonio and AEP Texas, a unit of Ohio-based American Energy Company.
The 370-mile transmission ine, which passes through 14 Texas counties, is named for the eastern and western anchor substations of the 370-mile powerline project. Its east terminal is the yet-to-be-built Howard Road substation in South San Antonio.
Numerous potential routes are under consideration for the project, which would become part of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT...The 760-kilovolt powerline will be the first of that size, with easily the largest voltage transmission line in the state. By comparison, ERCOT’s highest-voltage existing powerline carries 345 kilovolts.
(Excerpt) Read more at hondoanvilherald.com ...
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This Howard Rd substation (about 5 miles from my house) is finished or nearly so.
Is this a case of NIMBY or are folks supportive? Without reading I’m gonna guess the former...
I wouldn’t want to live next to this line. Or have my cattle grazing under it.
Yea, I can see that but It’s not a bad idea to install a new major power artery across the west. Article doesn’t discuss support or opposition.
They haven’t determined where the lines will go yet; it’ll be early next year before they decide on a route.
Must be for the data centers, while the peasants still live with rolling blackouts.
Texas needs these projects and more generation. They’re a drag on the Southwest Power Pool that involves states between them and Canada. Where I live, there are expectations that the plants in my area (Iowa/Nebraska) make up for Texas’s shortfalls.
An estimated 240 South Texas landowners and other interested parties packed the Uvalde County Event Center
That must not be a very large event center.
I suspect this will be an above ground installation. Too much voltage to be burried.
There are a few Microsoft plants going up west of San Antonio; I have no doubt they’ll “benefit” from this.
Uvalde...home of the cowardly coppers.
Indeed it is! I wonder whatever became of those cowardly cops?
bad link Friend. takes you iback to same article.
Same outfit tried to ram a huge power line down our throats years ago. It was to run from Western Oklahoma to somewhere in the Tennessee Valley. Their plans include imminent domain actions and a huge line that arcs and makes thunder on wet and humid days. I lived right in front of a power line corridor in Houston. Was never so happy to leave a place.
AEP also tried to build a small coal fired plant on city property offered to them in a far too sweetheart deal by the then mayor and local State Farm insurance agent. When we protested and shined a light on the whole affair the roaches scurried for cover and dropped the whole plan. One good thing is that these projects must have the stamp of approval by the local indian tribes and unless there is something in the pot for them, forget it.
These damn things are to move wind and solar from where it isn’t needed to where it is. A much better solution would be distributed modular small nuclear power stations. We should have been backing that instead of the net zero crap.
China has 36 ultra high voltage projects completed or in the works. At 1 million volts in both very long distance DC and up to 900 miles in 1 million volt AC.
No one is even close to their build out of power infrastructure no one anywhere. They added more wind and solar to their grid LAST YEAR than the total capacity of the five largest states in the USA including Texas who dwarfs second runner up California and third Florida by 2:1.
333 GW of new solar capacity installed, exceeding the rest of the world combined, in 2024.
72 GW new capacity in first quarter 2025 for a total installed of 886GW
And 521 GW of wind power installed
Combined those are 1407 GW this is why they have 36 Super grid lines done or in the works.
China’s total installed power generation capacity is 3,610 GW as of the end of May 2025 flat out kicking our butts in infrastructure. Cope hard all you want but the numbers don’t care.
The total USA installed capacity from any source in 2025 is 1,300 GW
Independent Texas ERCOT has 125 GW of firmly committed summer capacity less in the winter.
https://zmscable.es/en/linea-tension-mas-alta-changji-guquan/
The line in Texas being protested is junior varsity compared to this level of infrastructure.
Texas needs HVDC lines connecting it to the Eastern and Western interconnects at the 15,000 to 25,000 megawatt level to each grid. The three amigos project was supposed to do this years ago in the southern eastern most corner of New Mexico where the three grids are close to each other. There is a plan to put a HVDC line to Mississippi across Louisiana for a 3000 megawatt DC to DC bidirectional line Louisiana is opposed because they don’t get access to the line unless they build a HVDC/HCDC>HVAC station and that’s $$$$ the actual land foot print of a 800KV HVDC line is much smaller than a AC line you only need 2 conductors for DC not 3 and at 800 or 1000KV those conductors are smaller for DC due to no skin effect so the whole conductor volume is used for DC whereas only 15-20% of the outer diameter is used in high voltage AC lines due to skin effects. Either way Texas and the USA needs to get off our butts and build out a super grid or we will be left behind.
Remember china doesn’t do climate change, they don’t subsidise solar or wind either. they are adding huge amounts of solar, hydro and wind because they are energy harvesting machines not every consuming machines.
China imports more than half of its coal and nearly all of its oil they have huge rivers, a massive desert and tall mountains to ring with turbines. Coal plants consume energy its physics you consume more energy than your get back as electrons in the powerlines. Same for gas turbines or any other hydrocarbon fueled device the laws of thermodynamics are just that laws. You cannot mine or drill you way out of this fundamental fact of the universe.
Energy harvesting machines take energy to create them and then return energy as a desired product over their lifespan. The ratio of energy invested to energy captured and returned is positive for solar,wind and hydro. It’s formal scientific name is EROI.
Solar in a desert has a EROI of 50 or more and makes all the energy needed to mine, refine, make ,install in under 6 months for thin film panels in a KWP of 5. Literally 30 seconds of AI search of Google scholar will return dozens of peer reviewed data to back that up.
Wind in class 4 or above pays back its EROI in under a year and has a total EROI in the 25-40 range.
Hydro is 100:1 or better its in the same class as nukes.
Every coal plant, gas turbine, diesel generator is negative they will always consume primary energy and output less than they were fueled with in productive output. It only makes sense when you have ultra low cost consumable resources. Coal is 35% at best primary energy to electrons in standard boilers. Ultracritical turbines hit 48% the rest is waste heat up the stack and out the condenser. This is immutable laws of thermodynamics.
This project goes well with the ugly windmills coming into town. s/
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